# The monk who fixed NASA's computer

- Teacher: Ajahn Brahm
- Type: Story
- URL: https://beingmindfulstories.com/stories/brahm-nasa-computer-thai-monk
- Themes: loving-kindness, power of mind, humour
- Life situations: technology failures, frustration with machines

## Synopsis (editorial summary)

NASA in Houston can't get a new multi-million-dollar supercomputer to work; experts flown in first class all fail. A Thai engineer suggests it may be supernatural and fetches a forest monk from the Houston Thai temple, who meditates on loving-kindness and chants — and the mainframe works perfectly. Later monks meeting him at San Francisco airport find his passport holds a US diplomatic visa with no expiry date — perhaps, Ajahn Brahm jokes, so NASA could call him back in a hurry.

## The story, as told by Ajahn Brahm (verbatim captions)

The old story about that small company over in Houston called NASA. Small company. NASA. They were installing a new supercomput in their offices. Cost millions, tens, hundreds of millions of dollars. The main number cruncher for the whole of NASA. And once they, you know, joined all the bits and pieces together and installed it, they could not get it to work. They could not. But have you ever tried sort of a computer, something goes wrong and you can't make it work? It's really frustrating. But if it's NASA, that's, you know, it cost them millions every day that the computers down. So they got all these experts from the whole of North America, all the, you know, the big professors from all these universities. They flew them down first class to Houston. Nice hotel. Please fix the computer up. This is an emergency. And doesn't matter who they got down. No one could fix it. I'm not exaggerating the story. This is absolutely true. No one could fix this computer. And so they one of the um the workers there, he was a tie engineer. And this tie engineer said, "Well, if we can't fix it, I remember the story. If we can't fix it, perhaps it may be something supernatural. And I know the very person who could fix it if it's supernatural. There's a monk staying here, a forest monk in the Thai temple in Houston. And the advantages of monks is we don't cost anything. Give us a cup of tea and we'll fix anything for you. Good value for money. So anyway, they got this monk into the uh computer room, the main computer room, this huge mainframe computer, and then all he did was meditate. He was a great loving kindness monk. Bit of chanting, that's all. And the computer, honestly, I'm not exaggerating, after he finished his chanting and his meditation, this big mainframe computer worked perfectly. They couldn't believe it. They didn't know one didn't worry why it was working perfectly. They were just so pleased it could now work. And what can you give a monk? He doesn't need anything. So apparently what they did give him, we found this out afterwards when he went to San Francisco and one of the monks there met him at the airport. One of the monks who met him at the airport said, "Look, can we just look at your passport to make sure you got a proper visa?" and they looked at the visa and they couldn't believe what they saw. His visa was a diplomatic visa with no expiry date. He come in and out of United States as many times as he want whenever he wants for the rest of his life. And this was a time of homeland security and he was just a forest monk. Sometimes these forest monks the immigrations and customs are a bit dubious about you. When I was uh traveling through United States a few years ago, they looked at me, I only have my my bag. That's my baggage. Said, "Where's the rest of your baggage, sir?" said, "This is all I have." He said, "Well, what's underneath your robe?" And what this customs agent said, we said, "Is there a suicide belt under Europe?" Because in those days people would use suicide bolts. And so I opened up my R said, "No, it's suicide belt. It's only fat." And that's when the customs officer said, "Same thing." Did you get that story? Suicide belt. No, it's only fat. Same thing. But anyway, that was many years ago, so it hasn't gone off yet. I'm still alive. But anyway, he fixed his computer and he got a and I often I said this morning, it's probably true that the reason they gave him a diplomatic visa with no expiry date was not just to make his life easy, but if they needed to fix the computer in a rush, they could get him straight away. He wouldn't need a visa.

## Teaching point

Loving-kindness has power even over machines (his claim, told as true).

## Reflection (in the spirit of Ajahn Brahm's talk)

As Ajahn Brahm tells it, NASA's experts couldn't get a supercomputer running until a forest monk from the Houston Thai temple chanted loving-kindness over it. Believe what you like about machines. His real point is that kindness isn't only for special people. Practise it, even with the printer, and see what it does for you.

## Source

- [Our Mind and Our Health | Ajahn Brahm | 7 July 2023](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irCk-DJXisM) (Buddhist Society of Western Australia) — watch from 33:47 to 38:21: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irCk-DJXisM&t=2027s

Other tellings of this story:

- [Chanting | Ajahn Brahm | 6 May 2016](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a9TRG8soYQ) (Buddhist Society of Western Australia) — watch from 16:06 to 18:12: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a9TRG8soYQ&t=966s
- [Rituals - How And Why](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHS8_D0nnOg) (Buddhist Society of Western Australia) — watch from 23:51 to 27:09: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHS8_D0nnOg&t=1431s